


Home Is Where the Heart Is (and My Heart Is With You)

by Flowerparrish, Kaoticalmanac



Series: Bedroom Hymns [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Prompt Fill, Relationship Negotiation, disaster bi Eddie Brock, supportive Venom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 09:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17957777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoticalmanac/pseuds/Kaoticalmanac
Summary: Eddie Brock’s sex life had never been better.





	Home Is Where the Heart Is (and My Heart Is With You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zwalrus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zwalrus/gifts).



> Enjoy the sequel to our most popular fic, one we didn't know we were going to write until faced with an AWESOME prompt that complemented It's Only Weird If You Make It Weird way too perfectly to pass up. 
> 
> As with last time, this was written while we were smashed, and flowerparrish has been writing a lot in present tense lately, so the tenses in this fic were all jumbled up. We think we caught them all and made them right, but if you catch anything we missed, please let us know!
> 
> Enjoy!

Eddie Brock’s sex life had never been better.

 

That was really saying something, because for the majority of his adult life, he’d been regularly having great sex.

 

But regular sex with his alien other half with whom he had a telepathic bond? As well as intermittent orgies with two other gorgeous human beings, one of whom he knew better than he knew himself and the other of whom had a _spectacular_ cock? Yeah, Eddie’s sex life was _amazing_ these days.

 

Everything would have been perfect if he didn’t have, you know, _emotions_ that were ruining what should have been a perfect relationship.

 

The thing was, Eddie had never been good at friends with benefits. One night stands he could do. Relationships he could do, for a while, anyway, until he inevitably fucked them up by being his unfortunately ego-centric self. But friends with benefits grayed the line between those two polarities, and Eddie Brock developed feelings too hard, too fast, for that kind of relationship to be sustainable.

 

He knew this about himself. He had tried the friends with benefits thing in college as well as early on in his career, and it never ended well. He’d sworn off of this kind of relationship years ago, so he was (almost) at a loss as to how he’d ended up in one now.

 

Or at least, he would have been at a loss, if he wasn’t acutely aware of _how damn good_ the sex with Annie and Dan was. When Dan had voiced that their sexual escapade was something that should happen again, Annie agreeing, Eddie couldn’t help but agree. It was _everything_ he wanted, and that should have been a warning then and there, but he hadn’t realized until he was in too deep and unsure of a way out or through.

 

The problem was, Eddie obviously still loved Anne. He was pretty sure he would always love Anne Weying, and the fact that he kind of thought he might be falling in love with Dan Lewis as well did nothing to dampen his feelings for his ex-fiancée. That he was pretty sure he and his symbiote were in what could be considered a very co-dependent relationship also did nothing to quell his growing attraction to Anne and Dan, partially, he thought, because loving Venom felt like a natural extension of being one with the symbiote, and partially because he was apparently just one of those people who could love multiple people at one time.

 

Fuck, of course he would be.

 

The only unlovable person in this mess, he reflected, was himself. He knew Venom loved him, but he blamed that on the effortless care that came from their bond, the way they were so wrapped up in each other that love or hate were the only options. But he’d burned that bridge with Anne long ago—he was lucky she even stooped to allow a friendship with him—and why would a man like Dan Lewis ever look twice at Eddie Brock, _especially_ when he was already in a relationship with Anne Weying?

 

Eddie knew he wasn’t useless. He was good at sex—although he wasn’t sure if they wanted him in their bed for him or for his bond with Venom, sometimes, but they were so much one person that it (almost, almost) didn’t matter—and he was good at his job. Neither of those things made him worth considering for a relationship, especially a polyamorous one, which would be more trouble than his worth could counteract.

 

He understood the limitations of his relationship with Anne and Dan. But he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, slowly breaking his heart by having a taste of what being with them could be like and wanting more, but knowing he wasn’t strong enough to give up the little he had.

 

Besides, it wasn’t like that was all they ever did together. Sure, they fell into bed together more often than not—see, again, his amazing sex life—but sometimes they spent time together and didn’t have sex. Just last weekend they’d gone out to brunch together, something Eddie was still bemused by. They apparently tried to go out for brunch once at least once a month, and recently they had taken to inviting Eddie along. He kind of hated the pretentiousness of fancy brunch in a millennial culture, but he couldn’t resist the draw of spending time with the couple.

 

More than just that, sometimes he and Dan met up for drinks if the end of their work days lined up, and sometimes he and Anne met for lunch during the week. While _some_ of these occasions invariably ended in sex, most of them didn’t, were just casual expressions of friendship that had the simultaneous impact of making Eddie feel alive and making him yearn with longing and loneliness and something that wasn’t quite, but was almost, heartbreak.

 

Venom allowed Eddie about three weeks of this internal misery before he confronted Eddie about it.

 

 **They like us,** Venom told Eddie, once the symbiote got enough of a handle on Eddie’s complicated emotions and fears and self-loathing and figured out the problem. Venom’s tone left no room for argument; unfortunately, Eddie couldn’t agree.

 

 _They_ like _us,_ Eddie allowed, and felt Venom’s momentary victory, before continuing, _but they don’t love me._

 

He left Venom out of it—he didn’t know how they felt about Venom and wouldn’t hazard a guess one way or the other—but of his place in things he was certain.

 

 **Talk to them,** Venom demanded, apparently cottoning on to the fact that Eddie wasn’t going to be persuaded. **They will tell you.**

_Sure,_ Eddie agreed. Of course, there was no way in hell he was actually going to do it—he figured that after enough time passed, Venom would forget or Eddie would get used to things and it would become pointless.

 

He didn’t bank on Venom’s tenacity. But then, he really, really should have.

 

***

 

They spend enough time together that Eddie can reliably assume he’ll be spending at least part of the weekend with them, excepting a work emergency on any of their parts. So when Anne calls him on Tuesday evening and says, “We’re thinking of having a fancy dinner on Friday, Dan has Friday off and he wants to cook. Does that work for you?”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie says, because he doesn’t have surveillance for his ongoing project until Monday night down by the docks. “How fancy?”

 

“Wear a tie,” Anne tells him, and suggestion of heat in her tone, subtle but all too noticeable to someone who knew her as well as Eddie did. And fuck, like he was going to say no to _that?_

 

“I’ll be there,” he promised.

 

A work crisis did arise—of course—and he was half an hour late, arriving to their house at seven thirty on Friday evening. He’d luckily thought ahead and brought a tie with him to work, just in case, and it probably didn’t go with his leather jacket, but at least he’d technically followed Anne’s request.

 

 He shucked off his jacket before he knocked on their door, helmet in his hand. Anne answered the door and he felt an ache of warmth inside his chest when she smiled at him.

 

“Come on in,” she said, gesturing him inside before closing the door behind him. “Dan’s just finishing up.”

 

“What’s on the menu?” Eddie asked, not too picky himself, but knowing that Venom, for someone who would eat _anything,_ was surprisingly choosy at times.

 

Anne laughed. “What isn’t?” When Eddie nudged her, she smiled softly. “I’ll let Dan tell you, he’d know better than I would. I just got home an hour ago, but he’s been at this all day.”

 

“Eddie!” Dan’s pleasant voice called from the kitchen as they crested the top of the stairs. “How are you?”

 

“Good,” Eddie called back, honest as he could be. He took off his shoes, something he rarely used to bother with when he lived here, but that seemed to be a rule of the household now.

 

“And Venom?”

 

Venom preened in their shared mental spaces, pleased to be remembered. **Good,** he responded, but only to Eddie, not bothering to manifest.

 

“He’s good too,” Eddie told Dan. “We’re both curious about this fancy dinner, though,” he offered.

 

He leaned in the doorway of the kitchen, watching Dan at work. Dan began to list off the foods he had been preparing, from made-from-scratch bread rolls to t-bone steaks to crabcakes with smoky onion remoulade to rosemary roasted potatoes to cider-glazed brussel sprouts and bacon.

 

“This is enough to feed an army,” Eddie commented, although he was already dying to try even half of the things Dan had just listed and showed off.

 

“I just wanted to do something special,” Dan said, shrugging modestly.

 

“It’s definitely that,” Eddie agreed.

 

Anne came up behind him then, linking her arm through his. “Would you like some wine?” she asked. “Red should pair well with the meal.”

 

“Sure,” Eddie agreed.

 

Eddie recognized the brand of wine Anne was pouring evenly between three glasses, a brand she often only splurged on when celebrating. He was unaware of anything momentous that had occurred in any of their lives recently, but he figured maybe the nice meal was excuse enough.

 

“Cheers,” she said with a smile that tugged up one side of her mouth higher than the other, as she passed glasses to he and Dan before grabbing her own. His heart constricted with love and desire and happiness and longing, and he tapped his glass against theirs.

 

“Cheers,” he echoed.

 

It wasn’t long before the table was set, full almost to bursting with the many dishes Dan had made. The meal passed in enjoyable conversation, between the few new stories they had to tell since they’d last all been together almost a week before and politics and society. Venom loved all of the food, even the vegetables, even the “dead” meat, and Eddie felt warm and pliant by the time the meal was finished.

 

The opted for coffee and some leftover pie that Eddie had brought last weekend, chatting and slowly dropping more and more innuendos into the conversation.

 

Eddie knew where things were heading—where he wanted them to head, if he was honest—but some part of him was dreading it.

 

 **Ask them,** Venom demanded.

 

 _No,_ Eddie refused, a hard limit, because this had been too wonderful, and he wasn’t going to ruin things just because he wanted more than he could have.

 

But then he felt Venom’s resolve, his intent, and was helpless to prevent him from manifesting a physical form. **“Eddie thinks you only want him for sex,”** Venom said aloud, voice, as always, booming in the space. “ **You must tell him that he is wrong.”**

Eddie felt like he was dying, from mortification, from fear. _Shut up,_ he hissed mentally. Aloud, he said, “That’s not—”

 

“Eddie,” Anne said, cutting him off. “Is that what you think?”

 

Eddie no longer felt like he was dying. He _was_ dying. “No?” he tried, helpless as always in the face of Anne’s questioning. He could never effectively lie to her.

 

“Eddie,” Anne said again, softly this time. “I’m sorry.”

 

The words hit him like a wave, bringing with them a feeling of finality. This was over. He _had_ ruined this one good thing, just like he’d always known he would.

 

“I’m gonna—” he started, moving to stand.

 

Dan’s hand reached out, dropping down and holding his arm in a firm grip, preventing him from completing the motion. “Wait,” he requested. “Eddie, please, wait.”

 

Eddie dropped back into his chair, unsure and not quite daring to be hopeful. “Okay,” he agreed.

 

No one said anything for a few long moments.

 

Then Dan said, quietly, “Eddie, we thought—” He cut off for a moment, before continuing, “We’d be under the impression that we’d been dating you. For a month.”

 

Eddie’s brain short-circuited. “What?” he asked. He’d wonder if this was real, but in all of his imaginings of such an occurrence, he never would have wished for Venom’s smug feelings that perfectly communicated _I told you so._

 

“Eddie, this is our one-month anniversary,” Anne told him, gesturing around at everything.

 

Eddie opened his mouth. Closed it. Thought about that, about this, about everything. “Oh,” he said, dumbfounded. “Me?”

 

“What about you?” Dan asked cautiously, after waiting for Eddie to continue speaking.

 

“Why me?”

 

“Because you’re you, Eddie,” Dan said, as if that could ever be enough. At Eddie’s continued confusion, he continued, “you’re compassionate and driven to truth and justice. You want to help people; you _do_ help people. You’re amazing and kind and also kind of a badass. You’re everything I could ever want to be and more.”

 

“But you’re—” Eddie started, but Anne cut him off.

 

“I’ve always loved you, Eddie,” she said. “I loved you even when I hated you. I loved your drive and your passion, your wit and your charm. I even loved your rebellious attitude and your lack of professionalism, because it made you so different from me when in some ways we’re so similar. I’ve always admired you, even when I thought I couldn’t stand you, even when I hated to see you destroying your career, even when I resented you for taking me down with you. And I love you even more, now that I can acknowledge that you had principles and you stood by them, even if you did so in the worst ways.

 

“I love you,” Anne said, and Eddie could tell she was sincere, and he couldn’t believe it.

 

“It’s not about the sex?” Eddie asked, because he still can’t get past that idea. It was too much a part of him—the thought that that was what he was good for, and everything else was just something he fucked up.

 

“No, Eddie,” Dan told him. “The sex is great, and it may be what started this, but it’s not the only thing we care about. Not even the top thing we care about.”

 

“Oh.” Eddie tried to get his brain to catch up. “I can’t—”

 

“Come on,” Anne said, and suddenly she was standing beside him, nudging him into standing up. At some point, Venom had retreated, a comforting weight in Eddie’s psyche even as everything else was laid waste in a storm of confusion. Eddie followed her guiding hands to the bedroom, allowed her to efficiently help him out of his clothes.

 

Then Dan was there, nudging him into the bed, and he went willingly, because he trusted them, loved them, and was starting to believe that maybe they loved him, too.

 

Dan’s weight dropped down beside him, his knees nudging until Eddie took the hint and moved over toward the center of the bed. Dan immediately filled the space behind him, arms curling around Eddie’s stomach and shoulders, warm weights that grounded him in the midst of his world realigning.

 

Anne’s weight settled onto the bed next, on his other side, her smaller form curling around his. Her hair was in his face, smelling like strawberries and summer, and he sighed, contentment creeping up on him despite his inner turmoil.

 

“I love you,” he said, because that much he knew.

 

“I love you, too,” Anne whispered into the air between them, part confession and part promise.

 

“Sleep,” Dan whispered into his ear, his cheek then brushing against Eddie’s shoulder, stubble prickling where it dragged against his skin.

 

Eddie allowed sleep to wash over him, feeling safe, feeling warm, feeling wanted.

 

Feeling loved.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "Eddie has convinced himself that Anne & Dan only want him in their relationship for sex (Venom tells him he's an idiot for thinking this) he tries to avoid them to save himself the heartbreak/because he thinks they are better without him. Leads to Anne, Venom & Dan having to forcefully reassure their disaster bi."
> 
> Also, part of the prompt was bonus points if Eddie had to be restrained, which we meant to work in, but it never quite made it into the scene. Hopefully this is good enough though! Plus, that lead us toward sex, and ending it with sex after the build-up seemed disingenuous to the zeitgeist of the relationship development. But on that note--maybe next time ;)
> 
> Let us know what you thought of the fic! We hope you enjoyed reading it half as much as we enjoyed writing it.


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